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End of the trimester

This week I’ve
had a final presentation and a project in addition to my regular classes. We are
finally in the final weeks of this trimester. It is very different at ESSEC
than back home at NHH (Norwegian School of Economics). At NHH we also had final presentations and projects but
we also had final exams in addition to these. Here at ESSEC I haven’t had, or won’t
have, any final exams. I’m not complaining about that, but I have to admit
that it is a little strange that 80% of the final grade is based on group
projects and presentations, without any individual assignment (The last 20% being participation). In one of the
courses I have one group assignment, that we’ve presented already, and
one individual assignment. This makes more sense to me as you’ll at least have
some way to see what level of knowledge the student has. When its only
group projects it’s possible to do the tasks you’re assigned in the project the wrong way, because someone will still correct it for you if it’s wrong. Thus, someone who hasn’t learned
anything from the course can still get a good grade simply because the students on
his or her group “bailed” them out.

Luckily I’e been working on the projects throughout the whole trimester, so it’s not like I have too
much to do these final weeks. But as it is with most tasks, there’s always room
for improvement. So right now, it’s a mix of feeling that I am done with the
projects and knowing that I only have 1 week left, so I should take the time to
see where the papers can be improved.

In other
news, our girl Kareezia arrived to Paris on Monday. She’s from San Francisco,
wrong side of the bridge but close enough (Oakland being on the other side -> Raider Nation). We studied together at
INSEEC back in 2015. It’s great to have her back here in Paris. We’ve spent
some time catching up, but unfortunately this is one of the busiest weeks of
this spring, so I haven’t been able to spend too much time with her yet. The good
thing is that she’s here for one more week, so hopefully I’ll be done with my
tasks by Friday so that we can all go out and celebrate this
weekend.